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LocalCode vs Tabby

Which one should you try?

LocalCode

Free

Best for Mac users wanting local AI CLI assistance

Visit LocalCode See full review

Tabby

Free

Best for Teams requiring on-premises deployment and data sovereignty

Visit Tabby See full review

Pricing, capabilities and platforms side by side. Prices are as of the "Pricing checked" date in the table.

LocalCode

LocalCode

Type what you want, get a suggested command, approve it, and it runs — no API key, no network request, no telemetry. All inference runs on Apple Silicon through the Foundation Models framework, which means your file paths, hostnames, and search terms never travel anywhere. The workflow is strictly one-shot: one prompt, one command suggestion, one approval gate. There is no session memory, no chaining, and no multi-step automation. Teams that want anything beyond single-command suggestions will hit the ceiling of what this proof-of-concept was designed to do.

Tabby

Tabby

Open-source, self-hosted AI coding assistant with code completion, chat, and agentic automation.

AttributeLocalCodeTabby
PricingFreeFree
Price—Community free (up to 5 users); Team $19/user/mo (up to 50 users); Enterprise custom
Pricing checkedNot checked yetOct 19, 2026
Free trialNot statedNot stated
Open sourceYesYes
Has APINoYes
Self-hosted optionYesYes
PlatformsApple Silicon Mac, macOS 26+Linux, macOS, Windows (via Docker); Cloud IDEs; AWS, GCP, Azure
Languages—All (language-agnostic; supports any language supported by underlying LLM)
Released—2023
Pros
  • All inference runs on-device via Apple Foundation Models, so file paths, hostnames, and search terms never leave the machine — which means no data-handling review before using it on sensitive internal systems.
  • MIT-licensed with Go and Swift source fully available, so any developer can audit exactly what runs and modify the tool without negotiating a license or waiting on a vendor.
  • A mandatory approval step before any command executes, so a misunderstood prompt cannot silently delete files or overwrite output — you review before it runs.
  • No API key, account, or network connection required at runtime, so there is no quota to hit, no credential to rotate, and no outage dependency on a third-party service.
  • Fully open-source and self-hosted with no vendor lock-in
  • No external databases or cloud services required
  • Agentic multi-step task automation with Pochi agent
  • Support for multiple popular IDEs and code editors
  • End-to-end stack optimization for fast completions under 1 second
Cons
  • The tool has no session memory and no command chaining: each prompt is independent. If you need to run 'find the large files, then compress them, then move them,' you issue three separate prompts and manually carry the output between steps — at which point you are doing the work the tool was supposed to save.
  • The build requires macOS 26 and Xcode 26 alongside Apple Silicon. Teams with Intel Macs, Linux servers, or mixed-OS development environments cannot use it at all — this is the condition under which a team switches to a cloud-based CLI assistant like GitHub Copilot CLI or a self-hosted model with an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, which have no hardware gate.
  • The vendor labels this a proof-of-concept explicitly. There are no open issues, no pull requests, and a commit history of 20 commits. Teams that need a maintained, production-grade tool with bug fixes and evolving model support are adopting technical debt the day they ship this to a shared workflow.
  • Requires infrastructure management and GPU resources for optimal performance
  • Agent (Pochi) is in private preview, not fully released to general availability
  • Steeper setup complexity compared to cloud-based alternatives

Made up your mind?

LocalCode

Free

Best for Mac users wanting local AI CLI assistance

Visit LocalCode See full review

Tabby

Free

Best for Teams requiring on-premises deployment and data sovereignty

Visit Tabby See full review

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Specs come from each tool's own site and docs (how we test). AIDiveForge is editorially independent.

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